If the coconut is referred to as the tree of life, bamboo can become even more beneficial.
Edgardo Manda, president of the Philippine Bamboo Foundation, Inc. (PBFI), extolled the benefits and uses of bamboo as he called on Negrenses to plant bamboo to help address a world shortage of this commodity.
“Bamboo is the next timber, especially because of the total log ban in the country today,” Manda, former manager of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and the Laguna Lake Development Authority declared in a meeting of the Negros Oriental Micro,Small and Medium-Scale Enterprise Development Council last Thursday in barangay Maayong Tubig in Dauin town.
The PBFI has a 2.3 hectare bamboo seedling plantation in Dauin which grows 32 different species of bamboo. Manda said they will make Negros Oriental as the center of bamboo propagation and development in the Philippines.
“There are many uses of bamboo. In China, where bamboo is an $11 billion industry, they make bamboo beer, juice, bags, cosmetics, fuel, bricks, paper, lumber, clothing and many other products.”
Bamboo is also environment-friendly, sequestering 400 percent more CO2 gasses and supplying 25 percent more oxygen than trees, Manda said.
The PBFI, Manda said, produces bamboo seedlings to support the government’s greening program.
Herbert Patrick Gregorio, PBFI senior project director, said the seedling plantation in Dauin produces 400,000 seedlings every month for the national greening program of the Department of National Defense, which has 127,000 hectares of land classified as military reservation areas.
Gregorio said they also propagate 20,000 seedlings every six months, to be given away for environmental causes in Negros Oriental.
